


the gospel truth (III)

by onlypartly (foreverkneeld)



Series: gospel truth [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Olympian Gods, Ancient Gods Come Down To Man, And Play Hockey Because Why Not, D/s elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 19:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18105152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverkneeld/pseuds/onlypartly
Summary: In my drafts this was titled 'Herc Was Mortal Now' because I am nothing if not trash for any retelling of Greek myths. In this one, they play hockey.





	the gospel truth (III)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for the beta goes to atrytone who is a goddess and a hero in her own right, and to nat angularmomentum, for encouraging me back when i just said 'wouldn't it be funny if...'
> 
> the title is from Hercules, which if you haven't seen - you probably should. or at least read the Percy Jackson books. not because you need to in order to understand this. i just think they're neat.

_Young Herc was mortal now_  
_But since he did not drink the last drop_  
_He still retained his godlike strength_  
_So thank his lucky star_

_\- Alan Menken, Hercules, 1997_

* * *

When days of the gods were waning and every year fewer columns of smoke wafted their way to the Mountain, the gods themselves fell at first into despair. Their power grew less with ever unbeliever and fear came swiftly and stealthily upon them like Prometheus had come and stolen their fire in the first days of their rule. They each began to turn to their own path in search of succor - some retreated higher up the Mountain, trusting in their traditions and the faithful left to them. Some chose to leave the mountain and visit the mortals, clad in what godly likenesses were left to them. Still others, perhaps secretly glad for the laying aside of deity and an end to the quarrels of a hundred hundred years, cast away the trappings of celestiality and became themselves as mortals, hiding what they once had been from even their fellow immortals...

 

* * *

 

Zhenya is used to getting unintelligible messages from Sasha. The first time Sasha calls him about a thing called hockey, he knows to take the message with the usual five kilos of salt. So Zhenya is in no rush to follow up on Sasha’s demand that he come and see a game with him, Sasha, right away, because it’s the most glorious thing since Lysistrátē ended the Peloponnesian War.

Zhenya ignores him. And then he continues to ignore him. But after ten more messages of Sasha putting Homer to shame over this new sport, Zhenya reluctantly climbs into one of the metal death traps mortals use these days to travel overseas (whatever happened to a good old fashioned ship, Zhenya would like to know) and resigns himself to Sasha’s company.

The sport itself is absurd. Men as large as Zhenya himself with thin blades strapped to their feet push and shove and hit each other with curved sticks over possession of a small black object, trying desperately to put the thing in the net without being stopped by the figure in front of it. Or run over by the enormous men barrelling down on top of them. And yet, Zhenya can’t look away. The entire concept is - there is none of the clean sweat and physical mastery of wrestling or the pure elation of a footrace or the thrill of a hunt, and yet there is _something_...

Zhenya can feel Sasha smirking at his side and he rams an elbow into his ribs reflexively, but in truth - he can see what Sasha found so compelling in this thing. It’s like. It’s like -

Говно. It’s like when he answered his first prayer. The sound of his name on the mortal’s lips still tremulous and uncertain and the rush of joy Zhenya had felt as he sent a maybe too enthusiastic wind to speed his boat home.

Sasha is still watching him, but it’s softer now, and he doesn’t say a word about Zhenya knuckling at his eyes, because he is secretly a good man once you get past the constant...loudness. Zhenya clears his throat, pulling himself upright. “So what poor girl dragged you to your first game?”

“Zhenya!” Sasha places a hand on his heart. “Zhenyushka! My heart! You wound me!”

“Do I so.” Zhenya responds, dry.

Sasha grins, the whole of his body moving in a delighted shrug. “Ai, she is somewhere. We didn’t even sleep together, if you can believe it.”

“I can’t.” Zhenya smothers the impulse to look around for P.K. Sasha _is_ capable of self-restraint, contrary to the legends the mortals tell of them, but he always has an easier time with his control if P.K.’s disappointed gaze is in the offing. P.K. disapproves of them sleeping with mortals and has ever since the beginning. He has a theory that something in their blood makes them almost irresistible to most mortals and that even without use of divine power the imbalance is too great. Zhenya doesn’t see why ‘god-like seduction’ should stay as one of his powers when the ability to, say, send an ocean wave to soak Sasha at any given moment hasn’t. For some Fate-forsaken reason, Sasha’s particular brand of brash effusiveness seems to only turn away nine out of ten mortals, and for all his faults Sasha would never do anything one of them wasn’t truly eager to do.

“She went back home, maybe, now hush, second period is starting.”

With less reluctance than he makes a show of, Zhenya does let the matter drop, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Sasha for another forty minutes and finds at the end of it that his throat is sore from screaming his head off over a bad call from one of the referees or a particularly good goal or save. Well. Perhaps there is something to this hockey after all.

 

* * *

 

“Me, three years superleague,” Zhenya says, calmly, and waits for Sid to see the sense of his argument.

He tamed Kyllaros and Xanthos for the Wind Twins, and he is sure Sid doesn’t have any Harpy blood in him. And indeed, Sid is yielding, though judging by his expression Zhenya would have been better received if he had shown up to play with Scylla and Kharybdis on his shoulders. Actually, knowing Sidney Crosby, he would just have asked what Scylla’s slapshot was like and put Kharybdis in the net. Zhenya, though, is well used to smoothing over bruised feelings before they can escalate to screaming obscenities and people being kicked off of Mountains, so he touches Sid’s shoulder.

“Need make new luck,” he explains, when Sid looks at him with dark brows knit. “Think of handshake?”

Sure enough, the prospect of a new tradition to add to the veritable Cyclops-size load he already shoulders smooths the frown away and Sid ducks his head in a smile.

“Yeah, okay. Sure. New luck.”

They win, of course. Zhenya doesn’t _try_ to be smug on purpose, unlike some people - _Sasha -_ but, well. He’s a millenia old god of the sea with the second coming of hockey as his center. So long as the ice they’re playing on contains even a grain of salt, it feels as comfortable to him as the warm waters of the Mediterranean ever did. More, perhaps, because the only battles he is called to choose sides on are ones over whether Kuni moved Tanger’s bottle or if Sid needs to work an extra hour on his face-offs or just forty five minutes.

When he, along with Sasha and Sanya and Little Zhenya and one or two others, had chosen to leave the Mountain, they had only meant for it to be a short while. Just enough to let things settle down and see if any of their erstwhile worshippers would come back to them. But, well - decades get away with you, especially once you realise the mortals have not only developed methods of cooking things beyond ‘apply fire to meat’ and ‘apply hot water to meat’. Things like edible vegetation. And salt.

And hockey.

 

* * *

 

Sasha is upset. He is upset because they keep losing, no matter how many goals he puts in off of Nicke’s beautiful passes, and because Nicke is hurt, and Sasha has no ambrosia to fix him.

Nicke had refused to leave the ice even though the pain in his hip was so strong Sasha could almost taste it. After an overtime win against the Red Wings in November (Sasha hadn’t scored, but they’d won and Nicke had gotten an assist, so that was all to the good) Nicke had only just made it down the tunnel before he’d collapsed against a wall, face pale under the sheen of sweat.

Sasha, body already primed to turn towards Nicke just as a matter of course, catches him only a second later, tossing stick and gloves aside carelessly. “I got you, Nicke, you okay, come on.”

Nicke had let him take his weight, which was the point where Sasha had begun to feel truly alarmed. He had helped him to the trainer’s room, cursing the sterile walls of the visitors room nd standing around helplessly as Rick and Dave examined Nicke and exchanged grim looks.

Nicke had his eyes closed, hands gripping the sides of the table, and Sasha had wished he dared to let Nicke grip his hand instead, and tangle his other hand in those gorgeous sweaty curls and take the pain for him.

The diagnosis is surgery.

Nicke refuses to have it until after the season is over.

Sasha goes home, kisses all the dogs, and pulls out his phone.

“Calling to give up already?” Zhenya asks when he picks up, teasing.

“Zhenya.”

His tone changes at once. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Nicke - his hip. He’s going to have to have surgery, but he won’t do it until after playoffs.”

“You want my help.”

“I want your help.”

“If I do this, it’s not going to change the pain off the ice. You know that. And I’m not keeping it up against us.”

“Please, Zhenya. You won’t even know he’s there.”

Zhenya scoffs. “Right. Won’t know he’s there until he’s slid you an impossible pass and you tie it up and win. No thanks.”

“Every other game,” Sasha pleads. “Zhenya, please, he’s in so much pain.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Zhenya says, “Every other game. And because I love you, gods know why, salt water will help all season.”

“Thank you.” Sasha breathes, feeling almost dizzy with relief. He’s never before so much regretted being lord of the skies and not the seas.

 

* * *

 

If Nicke is being honest with himself, and he nearly always is, it is hard not to like Alex, even despite all his flashy asshole-ry.

Ovi, Nicke is sure, would say people love him _because_ of it.

He’s the most insufferable dick on the planet when he doesn’t get his way and is impulsive enough to put even the greenest rookies to shame, but by the same token -

He mostly wants for everyone around him to be safe and happy, and Nicke has on more than one occasion watched him give the literal coat off of his back to a homeless man.

Further proof of his...expressiveness? Show offish tendencies? The duality of man? His relationship with Malkin.

Nicke knows too well what kind of absolutes the press pushes on them to put much stock in their so-called rivalry, but the two of them can certainly get under each other’s skin like only two people who have a History can. Like siblings, or like ex-lovers maybe.

Nicke contemplates that idly for a moment and then has to throttle that strain of thought, because his mind is conjuring up images far too easily of Ovi’s big hands splayed across broad, tanned shoulders. Of his head thrown back in what Nicke knows is laughter but his mind slots neatly in as pleasure from -

long limbs and the same determination Malkin brings to his hockey bent on his companion’s responses as he uses that full mouth to -

Nicke physically wrenches himself away from his kitchen counter where he’s been leaning, mug in hand, staring into space. He glares down at the coffee left in the bottom of his cup and dumps it in the sink, turning to start a fresh pot. The first pot clearly wasn’t strong enough.

The whole thing is absurd. Ovi and Malkin aren’t fucking, never were, and Ovi is a good man and an even better hockey player and definitely, absolutely, a hundred percent straight.

Nicke is sure of it.

This makes it a little more shocking when, three weeks later, Nicke walks into their hotel room to find him sucking off Sidney Crosby.

He stops just inside the door, because there are many things wrong with the picture in front of him, not least of which is that they had just _lost_ to the Pens, so what the fuck, Sasha.

Crosby shrieks when he sees Nicke, which is gratifying. Ovi doesn’t even pull off Crosby’s dick, which is not. He just waggles the fingers of the hand not currently - again, what the _fuck_ Sasha - holding Crosby’s dick and then goes back to work.

“I am - _so_ sorry,” Crosby gasps, unsuccessfully trying to shove Ovi off with one hand and with the other pulling the sheet up over his chest in what is, frankly, a hilarious attempt at modesty. “Alex said you were out.”

Nicke could have told Crosby that trying to move Ovi when he doesn’t want to be moved is an exercise in futility. He raises his eyebrows. “I’m back.”

Even _more_ gratifyingly, Crosby flushes a darker shade of red.

Nicke chances a glance at Ovi and then has to quickly look away again if he doesn’t want his own face to match. He didn’t need first hand knowledge of the fact that apparently Ovi doesn’t need to breathe.

Crosby’s head slams back into the headboard hard enough that Nicke wonders if they need to go through concussion protocol.

Ovi grins smugly - which, ouch - and _finally_ pulls off. “Hi Backy.”

He sincerely hopes the effort it takes to tear his gaze away isn’t noticeable. “Ovi. Sorry to interrupt.”

“Is fine! More the better, yes? I’m not turn you into cow for interrupt.”

“Kind of you,” Nicke says, wondering once again what cosmic force is having a laugh at his expense by making him fall in love with someone so fucking _weird_. “Although, I think it would be a bull.”

“Cow, bull, swan, all good options,” Ovi says, cheerfully.

“Does Malkin know about -” Nicke makes a vague gesture in the direction of Ovi licking a luxurious stripe up the side of Crosby’s dick.

Crosby startles hard enough that he almost knees Ovi in the head. “Geno? What does - Geno can’t know! I mean, care! He - wouldn’t care, I mean! And it's none of his business...” Crosby trails off as both Alex and Nicke look at him with kind incredulity.

“Sid,” Ovi says, rubbing a comforting hand along Crosby’s thigh, “Zhenya would give you eight white horses and whole pod of dolphins if you let him.”

“That’s...weirdly specific. And it kind of seems like that should be penguins, not dolphins, right?” Crosby sounds a little overwhelmed. Nicke probably would too if he were Crosby, given that Ovi is doing something involving his mouth and Crosby’s fingers that seems like it should be illegal in several countries.

“Also,” Nicke says, crossing to the other bed and settling himself on it, deliberately ignoring the sight of Ovi’s large hands steadying Crosby’s hips as his head dips between pale thighs once more, “Whatever the hell kind of animals he’d get you, if he were any more in love with you he would probably either blow up or fight the entire Flyers bench for your honor. Oh, wait, he does that all the time.”

((Somewhere, Sanya Semin is looking to the heavens and muttering in hopeless-sounding Russian about idiots in love.))

NIcke ignores the hypothetical Semin and instead wonders how much longer it’s going to be before the other two do the decent thing and finish so Nicke can pull himself off in peace and then go drown himself in the bath, _also_ in peace.

Anything Crosby might have to say in response to this is overtaken by a series of breathless, high-pitched keening noises that Nicke absolutely does not find endearing.

“Fuck, fuck, Alex, yes, there, please, _please_.”

Ovi is murmuring soothingly in Russian that Nicke wishes desperately he understood less of. He could have happily died without ever knowing how it feels to hear Sasha’s rumbling voice calling Crosby ‘beautiful’ and ‘sweetheart’ and telling him how good he was being as he systematically takes the golden boy of Canadian hockey to pieces.

Five minutes later, and just in time to keep Nicke from biting fully through his tongue, Crosby lets out one last strangled “ _Fuck_ ” and his entire body convulses and then sinks back against the pillows. Ovi sits back on his heels, wiping his mouth and looking _extremely_ pleased with himself, which is a change of pace from his usual habit of looking only very pleased with himself.

Nicke glares, just as a matter of principle. Ovi’s not looking at him.

Crosby simply lays there in a daze for a few moments before he stirs, a frown starting between his brows. “I didn’t - did you -” he’s looking at where Ovi is still, very obviously, hard in his shorts. Inexorably, Nicke looks too. He should roll over and go to sleep. Or go have that bath. Or throw himself out of the window.

Literally anything except for what he does do, which is watch Ovi’s expression go as smug as the nights he gets a hat trick against Price or Fleury.

“Oh yes?” Ovi is nearly purring. “You want be so good for me, Sid? You want suck me off? Let me use you mouth?”

“I -” Crosby is brilliantly scarlet again, but with the same stubbornness that has him finishing out games on sprained ankles he nods, managing, “I want - I mean, it’s only fair, right?”

Ovi looks disappointed. “Sid. What I’m say, before game?”

Crosby looks down at his hands, plucking nervously at the sheet. “You, uh. You - you asked if you could. Um. Take care of me.”

Ovi’s smile is instantly back in place, wide and effusive as his goal scoring. “Yes! So good Sid. Because I’m best at hockey, best at sex, best at relax and take care.”

“That wasn’t _exactly_ -” Crosby begins, but Alex cuts him off with a finger against his lips.

“So! Point is, I take care of you. You not agree to take care of me. If you want to do, of course very nice and I’m enjoy very much. But also is fine if you not. Is not question of fair, just of what you comfortable with.”

Nicke suspects Crosby’s innate sense of justice won’t let this lie, but he’s surprised by the open languidness of Crosby’s body as he pulls himself upright and sets his hand on the waistband of Ovi’s shorts, eyes cast demurely downwards. “Please, Alex,” he murmurs, every inch of him broadcasting the desire to please so strongly that for the first time tonight Nicke is jealous of someone other than Crosby.

What Nicke wouldn’t do with _that_ at his fingertips. His imagination, well primed from far too many nights spent imagining - well. His mind is all too eager to put himself where Ovi is, pressing bruises to Crosby’s strong wrists, perhaps just this side of too hard. Of that red mouth opening underneath his own and dazed eyes meeting his own as he pulls away just long enough to set his teeth to the vulnerable arch of his throat and _bite._ This is all if he is good, though, and oh, he _wants_ to be good, certainly, but if he ever were not - well.

Nicke moistens his lips unconsciously, mind already flying ahead to how beautifully Crosby’s skin would take marks, of soft red (Capitals red) cords holding him spread wide for whatever Nicke wants - and he _wants,_ oh yes. A choking sound pulls him to the present, where Crosby has the head of Ovi’s cock in his mouth and tears in his eyes. The look on his face is determined, though, and he quickly ducks down again. It matches so exactly with the picture Nicke has just painted for himself that a groan escapes before he can bite it back.

Crosby starts, clearly having forgotten Nicke was even in the room, and he begins to pull off, but Ovi stops him, hand settling heavily at the base of Crosby’s neck even as he looks at Nicke straight on.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he,” Ovi says, proud, “Trying so hard for me, my good Sid, so eager to please he forget Nicky even here.”

He says it the American way, a short double ‘e’ instead of the Gavle pronunciation he’s perfected ten years on, and something in Nicke is strangely disappointed.

But then he goes on, gaze still fixed on Nicke, “Sometimes I think, Backy maybe not even human. So calm on his face, play so beautiful hockey, always in control, but now, Sid, you being so good you make him human.”

Nicke’s mouth is so dry. He feels like he swallowed a desert. Or one of Ovi’s first attempts at Swedish pancakes. But the look in Ovi’s eyes is absolutely a challenge and Nicke has never in his life backed down from one of those.

He gets off the bed, coming forward until he can see the sweat building at Ovi’s hairline from the effort he’s putting into holding back from fucking Crosby’s mouth. Without breaking eye contact, Nicke reaches down to where Ovi’s hand is still at nape of Crosby’s neck and covers it with his own. He feels the familiar breadth and warmth of Ovi’s blunt fingers underneath his and the unfamiliar soft slide of Crosby’s hair for a split second before he hauls that mouth off of Ovi’s dick.

Ovi squawks, outraged, but Nicke ignores him, crouching and catching Crosby’s eyes with his own.

There’s confusion there, and his pupils are blown to hell, but he looks lucid enough.

“Crosby, you okay with this?” Nicke asks, one hand still firmly holding him back from capturing Ovi’s cock into his mouth again.

Crosby’s eyes flick to Ovi and Nicke gives him a little shake. “Look at me,” he orders.

Crosby licks his lips and Nicke bites back a groan. He’s only human, whatever Sasha might say, and that _mouth_.

“Think you can call me Sid at this point,” Crosby - Sid - says, hoarsely, but still delightfully sharp, “And yeah. I’m good.”

Nicke waits another beat, but Sidney holds his eyes, firm, so he nods, rubbing a thumb in the hollow behind his ear. “Yes, you very good. Sasha is right about this. _Sasha_ , on the other hand, I think needs some help to be good.”

Ovi makes an incoherent noise of protest, and Nicke pinches his thigh without looking away.

“Okay,” Sidney says, teeth digging briefly into his bottom lip. “I - okay. Should I - do you want -” he trails off, shoulders hunching a little and Nicke frowns, because he doesn't want any trace of embarrassment present for this.

“Easy, easy. I make the play, yes? You a winger today.” Nicke senses Sasha opening his mouth again and administers another pinch.

Hockey metaphors might be cliche, but it’s hard to argue with the results. Sidney sinks back into his heels, hands folding in his lap and expression smoothing out.

“Good,” Nicke says, one final caress to the base of Sidney's neck before he turns his attention to Ovi, waiting not at all patiently for it. “You like to tease, yes?” Nicke is maybe being a little mean. But also Ovi has existed around him for ten years with his stupid fucking shirts and jeans and tangled mess of chains and never once suggested he could have had _this_ so - okay, he will be a little bit mean. “Now we gonna be fair. Sidney, you can suck, but not let him come.”

Sidney surges forward, taking an impressive length into his mouth, and Ovi groans.

Nicklas fists a hand in his hair, pulling his head back into a sharp arc. “Can you hold it, or do you need help?”

A challenging spark lights in his eye, the same that's there after some bullshit article by a retired asshole comes out talking about how his game is declining and then he goes out and gets a hatty the next game.

“Had thousand years of practice, Backy. Think I can do.”

“Good.” Nicke smiles, and this time he knows it's mean. “Hands behind your back.”

It’s ten minutes of Ovi sweating like he’s just done back to back powerplay shifts and Sid working with single-minded dedication before Nicke finally has pity. Not on Ovi. Ovi can suffer another good hour or so. But Sid has been good, and Nicke certainly deserves something after the past - oh, ten years of waiting.

Sid is also hard again, and he groans when Nicke touches him gently.

“What would you like, Sid?”

Sid blinks at him, looking like he doesn’t even understand the words, much less the question. Nicke was pretty sure he’d spoken English, so he tries again, more direct. “You want Sasha to suck you off? Me? You want me to touch you, reward for being so good?”

That gets through. Sid pulls off of Ovi and gets out, “Touch me, please, I need -”

“Easy, easy.” Nicke settles one hand on Sid’s neck, grounding, and drags the other more firmly over Sid’s cock.

He works Sidney to another release and lays him down on the bed, still gasping for breath and with his limbs so much dead weight. Then he turns to Ovi, waiting with that glitter in his eyes that Nicke is startled to realise he recognises.

How many times has Ovi looked at him in that exact same way before making an impossible shot, or goading the kids into some outlandish prank war, or flinging himself into Nicke’s arms after another landmark goal.

“You think you’ve waited long enough?” He asks.

Ovi blinks at him, head tilted a little to one side. “Waited ten years,” he says simply.

“That,” Nicke says, “is your own damn fault,” and pulls Sasha’s mouth to his.

 

* * *

 

No matter what some of the more disreputable hockey blogs might say, winning games and scoring goals does not give Sid a hard-on.

Unfortunately Alexander Ovechkin catching him around the neck with five seconds left on the clock and breathing into his ear a filthy litany of all the things he was going to do to him later that night _does_. It doesn’t really help that Sid has been a little hard ever since the hit Nicky laid on Geno in the second period. The corresponding retaliation hit and then Nicky's expression as the refs skated up to try and pull them apart had unfortunately gone straight to his cock.

But the game’s over, now. They won. He skates back to the bench after touching helmets with Murray, a little breathless. Geno, naturally, accosts him at once. “What he say to you?” He demands.

Sid raises an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t want to know what we got up to?”

Geno doesn’t have the decency to flush, just scowls instead like he’s far more interested in this saga than the fact that he just broke a major milestone. “This different. He trying to trick you, distract, so he can win.”

“Okay, first of all, there were five seconds left and we were up by two. Not even Ovechkin could tie it like that. Second, I’m insulted you think I would fall for that.”

“Your dick hard.” Geno says flatly.

Sidney glances down reflexively and then glares. “I’m wearing my jockstrap, Geno.”

“You still looked.” Geno is unrepentant. “Tell me what Sasha say to you or I go ask him.”

“I’m not telling you.” Sid says, stubborn, and then because he suddenly seems to be possessed by an evil spirit, possibly Nicklas Bäckström, “If you want to know you can come to my house tonight.”

Geno glares at him, but then he has to go back out on the ice and acknowledge the cheering fans and then he has to have his picture taken with his milestone puck, and then he and Sid have to take a picture with the milestone puck, and Sid has to do all of this with a semi-hard dick, and it’s all terrible. Mostly because Geno hasn’t bothered to shower yet and of course the PR team wants them to be close for the picture and Sid’s hand is resting as gingerly as he can manage on Geno’s sweaty shoulder, but then Geno’s fingers cover his on the puck and oh, God, everything is awful; when is someone going to mercy kill him or at least put him out with another concussion so he can’t see anyone for three months.

He just wants to go home and take a cold shower and go to bed.

Obviously it gets worse from there, though, because when he gets home Alex Ovechkin is sprawled on his couch, eating potato chips Sid definitely didn’t have in his house, and Nicklas Bäckström has his head in the fridge and an unimpressed look on his face when he emerges.

Nicky usually has an unimpressed look on his face, though, so Sid can’t be totally sure it’s because of the contents of his fridge.

“You fridge sucks,” is Nicky’s succinct comment before he pulls out a bottle of coconut water and heads for the couch.

Well, okay, it is because of the contents of his fridge. “I didn’t know we were going to be having a three course meal,” Sid huffs, “My grocery delivery doesn’t come until tomorrow.”

“Nicke just a growing boy so he always hungry,” Alex says soothingly.

Sid looks at Nicky, currently sitting on top of Alex because Alex was taking up the whole couch, a full 185cm and at least 200 pounds, and tries not to say anything. Then he does, because, come _on_. “He’s thirty-one.”

“He growing _spiritually_ ,” Alex says, without missing a beat, which is at once so completely wrong and also so irritating that Sidney has to go stick his own head in the fridge for a minute and try to remember why he’s sleeping with these people.

“Sid!” Comes a sing-song from the couch. “Sid! Stop trying to bury head in fridge and come over here. You win!!! You get celebration blowjob!”

“I’d have gotten a blowjob if we’d lost,” Sid points out, because he’s definitely gotten several of those over the course of the last couple months. Unfortunately.

“Yes but those consolation blowjobs! You see, Nicke give best blowjobs.”

Sid’s dick, with no jock restraining it now, is suddenly very interested.

He’s never gotten a blowjob from Nicky. He’s been fucked by him, and gotten rimmed by him, and on one memorable occasion, got tied down by him. That started with all four limbs tied and a ring on his cock--Nicky had ridden him for well over an hour, using Sid to get himself off before finally unsnapping the ring and stroking him to completion. Sid cried and begged and pleaded the entire time, and Nicky watched him with a very faint smile on his face and ignored his pleas entirely. Alex had been tied to a chair in the corner, relegated to watching until Nicky was free to take care of him, which was satisfying in a completely different way. After both of them had come Nicky had made Alex clean them up and then let Alex slide into him, slowly and gently working both of them to climax. All three of them had fallen asleep sprawled over each other and Alex’s huge bed.

So.

Anyway.

He’s never had a celebratory blowjob from Nicklas Bäckström and that does seem. Well, it just seems like something everyone should get to experience at least once. He abandons the fridge and walks over to the couch. Alex beams up at him. He’s gotten chip fragments all over the couch. This would bother Sid more if his head weren’t completely full of the memories his brain is helpfully providing of the last time he saw Nicky sucking Alex off. Still he somehow feels he’s forgetting something - something important, maybe? But then Alex has a heavy hand on the back of his neck and Sid has stumbled awkwardly to his knees on one end of the couch and Alex is kissing him. Alex kisses like he does everything else - joyously, with every last part of himself invested in it.

Sid moans helplessly into it, opening his mouth for more and shuddering as the first fuzzy-soft feelings of going into subspace start to fog his mind. He used to hate how easily he went down, the first few times he was with someone who liked to dom, the surprised, “Oh, wow, you’re - already under, okay.” And then there’s how long it takes him to come back. He needs a lot of attention and aftercare, he knows, and when he was younger especially it was hard not to resent his body for it. But one night when he and Geno were both out for the rest of the season, staring blankly at the tv airing late night Jeopardy re-runs, having had more to drink than strictly advisable, he’d told Geno some of it, lulled into complacency by the sleepover-like atmosphere. And instead of mocking him like part of Sid was desperately afraid he’d do, Geno just nodded and said, English made even slower by the alcohol, “Make sense. Too many - too much, all time. Heavy. You get chance, put down? Put down most fast.”

Geno hadn’t remembered the conversation at all the next morning, and Sid was thankful. He _was_ . And it had made it easier, when Ovi had asked if he wanted to blow off some steam after the game in November, to just go with it. To let himself fall into that dim, soft space, and let someone else look after everything, just for a while. Even when Nicky had shown up, Sid hadn’t come all the way up. To have _two_ people looking after him was really - he hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility. He never would have even thought of asking.

Five minutes later, his shirt is off and his pants are undone and Alex is groping him thoroughly through his underwear as he kisses his way down Sid’s neck. Nicky is still sitting on Alex’s back, but he’s somehow maneuvered Sid so he’s sitting now instead of kneeling and he has one of Sid’s legs in his lap and is doing something very distracting to his hamstrings. This is when his front door opens and Geno walks in, because Sid gave him keys and forgot, and also told him to come over and then forgot, and also also _forgot to tell Alex and Nicky_.

There’s an awful silence for either ten seconds or a thousand years, and then an explosion of angry Russian. Sid cringes, all the soft and warm feelings gone in a split second. Nicky must see it, because he kicks Alex off the couch, literally, and pulls Sid in close. A reverse mirror of their positions on the ice earlier, Sidney thinks, a little hysterically, and then wonders if now Alex and Geno are going to cross-check each other.

“I got you,” Nicky says, quietly, just in Sid’s ear, “They just need a minute to be idiots. You’re fine, you’re good, Sid. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Then he raises his voice, not shouting, but with a definite edge in it that makes Alex, at least, snap to attention, every atom of his body suddenly oriented towards Nicky. “Shut _up_ , Malkin. Sid is _fine_ , and no one is taking advantage of anyone, and you’re upsetting him. Alex, come here.”

Alex disengages at once, coming back to the couch and kneeling at Nicky’s feet, eyes finding Sid’s. Sid would be embarrassed at being talked about and over like he’s a little kid, but. Something about the undivided attention is making something behind his gut feel warm.

“You okay, Sid?” Alex asks, quietly. “Sorry, I’m not mean to make you upset.”

“I’m - fine.” Sid gets out. Twisting a little so he can look at Nicky he says, apologetic, “I’m sorry, I - told Geno he could come over so I could explain the - the thing on the ice. Then when I got home I forgot to tell you.”

“Yes, I am most distract, I understand,” Alex says smugly, and Nicky rolls his eyes, ignoring   him in favor of telling Sid, “You’re fine, Sid. It was a lot all at once, and that’s on me. I should have taken it slower; I’m sorry.”

“No!” Sid says, and then hears how much force he put into it and flushes. “Sorry, I just mean - no, it was good, I - it felt nice, like - I got to come home and just. Take everything off right away, you know?”

“Sasha, shut up,” Nicky says, before Alex can make the obvious joke. “I understand. I still should have made sure there wasn’t anything we needed to talk about, so I’m sorry about that, and next time we’ll do better, right?”

“Right,” Sid says, relieved to have a goal ahead of him; something to work towards.

“What the fuck.” Says Geno, and Sid starts again. Nicky settles him with one hand on his chest.

“Sid, I’m going to have Alex lay on top of you while I talk to Geno. Is that okay with you? You don’t have to come up farther or go under more. I don’t want you getting worked up more than you are is all.”

Sid acquiesces with a nod, trying not to look too anxious at the prospective conversation. Alex climbs up on top of him, settling himself heavily on top of Sid and smiling at him. “Hi, Sid. Okay if I kiss you?”

“Um.” Sid looks at Nicky, who smiles, just a little.

“Up to you.”

“Then yes, please.”

“So good boy, saying please.” Alex croons, leans back in, and very shortly Sid has forgotten to be worried about anything.

He vaguely hears Nicky talking to Geno in the background, the sing-song of Nicky’s accent mingling with the occasional rough rumble of Geno’s. Sometime later, the weight on top of him shifts, and the warm mouth covering his own disappears. Sid grumbles wordlessly, eyes closed, and there’s a chuckle from beside him that he knows very well. His eyes fly open and, yeah, that’s Geno, perched on the arm of the couch and smiling down at him.

“Hi, Sid,” he says, a lot more quietly than he’d come in.

“Hi,” Sid tries to say, and then has to clear his throat and try again. “Hi.” On the other side of him, Alex looks very smug.

“Sorry I yell, before. Just see this one on top of you and think - well, never mind. Just remind me of something from long time ago. Backy explain.”

Despite the reassurance, Sid thinks Geno looks a little hurt. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” He says. “It just kind of - happened. And also kept happening. It’s not like - it’s not that serious, really. We’re not like - dating.”

“Wait, wait.” Alex sits up straight, looking indignant. “We not? I tell lots of people we dating.”

“What?!” Sid strangles out. “You - what! No! Nobody was supposed to - we’re not dating! We’re just - we fuck, once in a while, it’s not -”

“Calm down,” Nicky orders, one hand on Sidney’s chest again. “He told Sanya and little Zhenya, and they know not to tell anyone.” Sid sinks back, relieved, and Nicky raises his eyebrows, nose looking somehow very judgmental. “But I am wondering why you think we’re not dating.”

“Well we don’t - go on _dates_ , or - live together, or - get in fights about people leaving their socks places. You know! Relationship stuff!”

“You do all those things with me,” Geno points out, sounding suspiciously like he’s trying not to laugh. “You cheating on Sasha and Backy with me, Sid?”

“I - what! No! I’m not cheating on - I’m _not dating anyone!_ ” Sid yells, and then winces. He hadn’t meant to get that loud.

“Sid,” Alex says, sounding patient. “We like you, lots. We Facetime, lots. Always come over when you close, or we close to you. Watch horrible boring war movies.”

“They’re not _boring_ -” Sid tries to protest, but Alex waves him off.

“Point is, we both all in! Hundred ten percent, leave it all on ice.”

“Getting it in deep.” Nicky chimes in, his deadpan delivery so perfect that Sid can’t help but laugh.

“It’s not - it’s not that I don’t _want_ to,” Sid says, hesitantly, even though he’s really not sure at all. He likes his time and space belonging to him, and the enforced distance caused by the - well, distance - means that he can always plead the media running long or practice going over. He’s not afraid of commitment! He commits all the time! But he doesn’t like change, and this would be a lot of it. In fact, he’s historically _really bad_ at change, at all, in any form.

“Historically, I’m really bad at change,” he points out. “And surprises. And this would kind of be both.”

“True.” Geno says, and Sid elbows him in the ribs. Geno and Alex are looking at each other, in a way that even Sid, distracted as he is, can tell is suspicious. Nicky, not at all distracted and also a lot more willing to be openly vicious than Sid, says, “What did you do.”

Both of them immediately look guilty.

“Well, if we talking about surprises…” Geno starts, before looking to Alex.

“Nicke,” Alex says cajolingly, “Remember how you so mad I never tell you I’m want to date you for long time?”

“Ten years.” Nicky says flatly. “I remember.”

“And then you make me wait for so long before you let me come?”

“I remember.”

Alex sighs and gets up, going over to their bags, dumped just inside the door, and rummages around for a second before coming back with something in his hand. It’s metal, gold-color, although probably not really gold. Actually, knowing Ovi, who knows. Nicky takes it, and with a jolt, Sid realises it’s a cock cage.

“You gonna want to put that on me after I tell you this, I think.” Alex says mournfully. “Probably not let me come for week.”

Geno stares at it, and mutters something that Sid definitely recognises as an imprecation, putting a hand over his eyes.

“We’re not from Russia.” Alex says.

Sid stares. “Of course you’re from Russia. Everyone knows you - you talk _all the time_ about how Russia is the best country in the world and everyone from Russia is better than everyone else! Geno, your _birth certificate_ says you were born in Russia!”

“You’ve seen his birth certificate?” Alex asks, distracted momentarily by this delicious piece of information.

Sid flushes. “Shut up, it was like - a thing, at the doctor’s, we had to - you know what, can we go back to you not being Russian?”

“Oh, no, we Russian,” Alex blithely contradicts himself. “Just. Not _from_ Russia. In the beginning.”

Nicky closes his eyes. “You’re about to tell me something I’m going to hate, aren’t you.”

“Um. Maybe.” Alex gives them both his most winning smile, all his missing teeth on display. “Okay, so thing is, long time ago, lots of people worship lots of gods, yes?”

“What, like, Baal?” Sid asks, mystified about what this has to do with anything.

“Okay, no, not like that at all. Baal is gross, bad god. Like - you hear of Zeus, right? Poseidon?”

“Like in the Percy Jackson books?” Taylor loves those. She’s always insisting they’re really good and not just kids books.

“Yes! Like in books! Except not _everything_ people say about us is true, because lots of it actually was other gods, like from fertile crescent, and everybody knows those ones are crazy. Anyway, sorry. Ah. Yes. Zeus and Poseidon. Is us.”

There’s a very weird silence, during which Sidney tries to remember what you’re supposed to do if you’re around someone who’s delusional. Are you supposed to stand very still or make yourself big and frightening? Or is that bears?

“I should have guessed.” It’s Nicky, and Sid looks at him, eyes wide. It’s spreading, apparently. Maybe it’s like - a zombie thing? Like that show the younger guys are always watching, except instead of zombies it spreads insanity. “The Capitals. The Eagle. The way you play. And my hip, a couple of years ago - you did something, didn’t you?”

“That is me, actually.” Geno raises his hand, looking sheepish. “Sasha call me and ask. We not really have powers any more, not like old days, but people being interested now - it give us enough, can do small things. Only near water, so that why it better when you skate or take bath.”

Nicky nods, seeming to accept this readily enough. “Then why -”

“I’m sorry!” Sid bursts out, “But we’re just - going along with this? They’re not eon old _gods_! For fuck’s sake - Geno threw a temper tantrum last night and got himself ejected from a game!”

“That last week,” Geno mutters, but Sid talks over him, “And if you’re gods, why are you playing hockey instead of curing malaria or world hunger or something!”

“Ohmygods, Sid, you can’t just ask people why they playing hockey,” Alex says. Sid ignores this as yet more evidence of Alex’s clear insanity.

“Also, gods aren’t real. And - and they’re not real! And it’s a stupid joke, and I don’t think we should be going along with it, Nicky.”

Nicky looks at him for a long moment, and then turns to Alex. “Is there anything you can do for proof?” He asks.

Sid makes a despairing sound. That’s not how you start gently disabusing someone of a crazy idea.

“I can’t call lightning storms anymore.” Alex sounds _way_ too sad about that. Sid dreads to think what the reaction would be if an Alexander Ovechkin scorcher was made of literal lightning.

“Sasha, you can still do eyes?” Geno asks. Alex nods. “I can do small storm in water.”

“A tsunami?” Nicky asks.

“Maybe, yes. Only if water is salt.”

Silently, Nicky goes to the kitchen and fills a bowl with water, dumping in a healthy dose of salt. He brings it back and sets it down on the coffee table.

Sid opens his mouth to ask them to please use a coaster, and then shuts it again. He’ll just get the coaster himself, he thinks, standing.

But ten seconds later the point is moot, because Geno’s eyes are shut and his hands are held above the bowl and something is happening in the depths of the water. It looks like a pot of water about to boil, except the bubbles aren’t random - they’re drawing together in the middle, swirling faster and faster and forming something that looks to Sid’s eyes more like a tornado than a tsunami, but the fact is - he’s definitely doing something to the water. That was normal water that Sid watched Nicky get and now it’s raging within the confines of the bowl. A tempest in a teapot.

After a minute or so Geno sighs and leans back heavily against the couch, and the water stills and returns to normal, looking like was never part of a miracle. Sid doesn’t know what to say. Nicky just nods and looks at Alex.

“Mine not so flashy,” he says, almost apologetically, and closes his eyes like Geno had. When he opens them again, they’re flaring gold. Not like in the cheesy romance-driven teen dramas that feature magicians or werewolves - the entirety of his eyes is swallowed up in gold, from one corner to the other, and it’s beaming light out of them, casting weird shadows on the bowl of water and sending light dancing across the ceilings and over Nicky’s hands and the lines of Geno’s shoulders.

It seems to have taken all the air out of the room and replaced it with a kind of ambrosia that explains why people have always liked Alex as a person far more than they have Sid. He doesn’t need air as long as he can be near Alex, breathing him in instead of oxygen.

“Oh.” Nicky says, quietly, and when Sid looks at him, he sees that Nicky’s eyes, too, have changed. His pupils are blown so wide only the thinnest line of green remains.

“Geno,” Nicky says, without taking his eyes off of Alex, “If you don’t want to see people having sex you should leave right now, because I’m about to fuck Sasha.”

Geno blinks and then shrugs. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Mmm.” Nicky smiles, the slow thin one that Sid has learned to both love and dread, because it means something incredibly satisfyingly hard is about to happen. “You haven’t seen _me_ take him.”

Sid has, but even he has to admit there’s something different about this time. Some circuit that’s finally been closed, some wall that’s finally come down, because when Nicky puts Alex on his knees in front of the couch and fastens the cock cage neatly in place, all Sidney can think is that Alex may be the god, but there’s absolutely no doubt about who is worshipping who. Alex looks at Nicky like he’s - like he’s - like if he were to win the Cup again, it wouldn’t be worth it unless he won it with Nicky at his side. Sid looks over to Geno, and instead of finding him watching the two on the rug, he finds him looking steadily back. And, well.

Maybe Sid understands how Alex feels.

* * *

Two weeks later, Nicke watches Kuzy materialize a bottle of wine out of thin air. Sasha feels his stare and meets his eyes, glancing at Kuzy and then back to Nicke. He looks at him pleadingly.

Nicke raises his eyebrows. Sasha sighs and trudges toward the bedroom and the cock cage. At some point, Nicke will have to admit that Sema told him about where he and Sasha were really from in Nicke’s first year with the Caps. For now, though, he’s happy to let Sasha suffer a little.

Honestly. Ten fucking years.


End file.
